Peruvian teacher with expiring visa focus of campaign to keep him at Vernal school

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Jose Mendoza, a dual-language Spanish-English teacher at Uintah High School, wants to keep teaching at the Vernal school.
From Peru, his visa to work here expires in 2027 and his backers have launched a fundraising campaign to help him get a new visa.
His supporters tout the import of dual-language programming and the impact Mendoza has had in Vernal.

VERNAL — In his four-plus years of teaching at Uintah High School in Vernal, Jose Mendoza has helped boost the Spanish skills of students in the school's dual-language immersion program significantly.

The spring before he started, just three students were qualified enough in Spanish to take part in a college-level class. Under the tutelage of Mendoza, a teacher in the school's dual-language Spanish immersion program, the number has surged, currently sitting at 48 students.

"I try to use all my professional background, my expertise and try to channel all those skills to the benefit of my students here in Vernal," said Mendoza, originally from Peru and teaching in the school's dual-language immersion program with a J-1 visa. "As you can see, it's been successful."

With his visa expiring at the end of the 2026-2027 school year, however, Mendoza's future in Utah is uncertain. It's led his backers to take the unusual step of launching a campaign to raise funds to cover the cost of an H-1B visa so he can keep teaching at Uintah High School, highlighting the value they think he has in the community.

"It's important to us as a community to have teachers that know what they're doing and are invested in our community," said Genica Donaldson, leader of the fundraising drive and parent of a Uintah High School student in Mendoza's class. Keeping Mendoza will allow continuity in the Uintah High School program.

James McKay, a German, Spanish and English as a second-language instructor at Uintah High School, said Mendoza, known as Pepe, has worked "tirelessly" to build the dual-language Spanish-English program.

Mendoza "wants to continue teaching at UHS and keep being part of our students, staff and community. He loves working here and makes the (dual-language immersion) program a success," he wrote in a letter of support for Donaldson's fundraising effort on GoFundMe*.

More generally, the fundraising drive for Donaldson underscores the importance of dual-language immersion programs, a focus of periodic debate and scrutiny around Utah by education officials and lawmakers as enrollment numbers fluctuate. She spearheaded a similar fundraising effort in 2025 to cover the H-1B visa costs of a husband-and-wife teaching team from Spain at Discovery Elementary in Vernal whose J-1 visas were also on the verge of expiring.

Andrew Adams, KSL

Dual-language programming "opens up another part of your brain that you don't access unless you learn another language," she said. "I don't feel strongly about Spanish versus Portuguese or Russian or Italian. It doesn't matter. I just think learning a different language allows your brain to function in a different way and that's an important skill."

Having a native speaker teach the foreign language, moreover, is better for students, she thinks. Not only can they impart the language, but they can teach students about the culture of their home country.

Other school districts around Utah have covered the costs of H-1B visas for foreign-language instructors from abroad, Donaldson said. Lacking the needed funds in Uintah School District coffers, though, she is seeking community support. As of Wednesday, the effort had raised nearly $3,100 of the $3,960 sought to cover visa fees and attorney costs.

"Jose intends to apply for an H-1B visa and the school district has agreed to sponsor him contingent on the funds being raised and donated to the school district for this purpose," Uinta School District Superintendent Rick Woodford said in a letter of support for the initiative, supplied to KSL.

'Let's put Vernal on the map'

Mendoza is living in Vernal with his wife and two kids, all from Peru. He had been teaching in Lima, the Peruvian capital, and applied to come to work in Utah in part because he was looking for a professional challenge. He also wanted to learn more about the U.S. educational system.

The Utah State Board of Education oversees a program to bring foreign teachers to Utah on J-1 visas, specifically geared to recruitment of educators from abroad for the varied dual-language programming around the state. The program has brought many teachers to the state from around the world, and it ultimately brought Mendoza to Utah in 2022.

Adjusting to the change between Peru and Utah and the differences in the educational systems in the South American country and the United States took time. "It was very ... complicated, kind of trying to get adapted to the system," Mendoza said.

But he managed, citing his years of experience as a teacher, which included time as an instructor in an International Baccalaureate program in Lima, and wants to keep at it. J-1 visas last only up to five years, and the term of his visa ends after the 2026-2027 school year, hence the campaign to help him get an H-1B visa, another U.S. visa program used to recruit professionals from abroad.

"Let's put Vernal on the map," Mendoza said, referencing his initial goal of boosting the ranks of Uintah High School students in the overall pool of Utah students who pass the Advanced Placement Spanish test each year. "That's what I tried to do and that's what I've been trying to do all this time, and I want to keep on doing it."

Mendoza's wife wants to stay, he said, and he was particularly moved by what his son Facundo had to say on the topic. Facundo, a fifth-grader, is a student in the dual-language Spanish-English program at Discovery Elementary in Vernal.

"Facundo also said something very important to me, 'Hey dada, I don't want to lose my friends as I already did in Peru. I have connections,'" Mendoza said. "That was something that really touched my heart."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.